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Deloitte Insights for CIOs couples broad business insights with deep technical knowledge to help executives drive business and technology strategy, support business transformation, and enhance growth and productivity. Through fact-based research, technology perspectives and analyses, case studies and more, Deloitte Insights for CIOs informs the essential conversations in global, technology-led organizations.

How CIOs Can Support the Growth Agenda

By improving support for the company’s business objectives, CIOs have an opportunity transform IT into a true strategic asset.

The recent global financial crisis led many companies to undertake aggressive cost-cutting initiatives to improve efficiency and lower overhead costs. While these efforts were largely successful, CFOs and other business strategists are now shifting their attention back toward growth, says Robert Comeau, a principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP. “Many of the levers that made it possible for companies to outperform the underlying economy have been pulled. There are no more costs to be driven out,” he says.

Since an estimated 46 percent of CIOs in large companies ($1 billion or more in annual revenue) report directly to CFOs¹, supporting growth-focused business objectives may be a strategic and professional imperative. “Increasingly, you are seeing ultimate responsibility for IT shift to the CFO’s office,” says Comeau. “For CIOs, this means that it may be more important than ever to align IT’s goals and efforts with those of the CFO and the business side.”

Some CIOs may interpret requests for better alignment as the latest “mission critical” demand on IT organizations already struggling to keep core functions running with resource and budget constraints. Yet, providing improved business support represents a golden opportunity for CIOs to reinvent IT—and elevate their own status within their organizations, says Nnamdi Lowrie, a principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP. “CIOs are well-positioned to help C-suite leaders explore how social computing, cloud, advanced analytics and other powerful technologies can drive the business forward.”

From these interactions, says Lowrie, CIOs can build relationships and gain a deeper understanding of each functional lead’s strategic objectives and of the technological capabilities that will be needed to achieve the expected value in the marketplace. “The CIO can begin reinventing IT as a strategic asset.”

Reach Out and Touch Somebody’s Plan

Comeau says that to align IT’s efforts more closely with their companies’ strategic goals, CIOs should consider the following questions:

Is IT currently organized in a way that effectively supports the business? Traditionally, IT’s role has been to maintain systems and keep operations running. As a result, many IT organizations are organized around infrastructure, applications, and, occasionally, providing support for point solutions and departmental capabilities. “Keeping the lights on will be an ongoing IT responsibility,” says Comeau. “The CIO’s challenge will be to do this while simultaneously reorganizing IT to provide the tools, services and support that business leaders need.”

Can system architecture accommodate the unexpected? Each quarter, Deloitte surveys CFOs from large, influential companies in North America about their business perspectives and actions. In Q3 2012, nearly half of those surveyed said their IT systems currently do not adapt well to changes in business strategy, tactics and/or scale (only 18 percent of survey respondents expressed a positive sentiment on this issue). Given this challenge, Lowrie says CIOs should consider redesigning system architecture so that it can better adapt to shifts in market conditions and grow as the business grows. “This can be difficult because even though priorities are fluid, IT’s budget planning processes are usually fixed.”

Does the company treat data as a strategic asset? According to Comeau, many companies “treat data as something that a data warehouse spits out now and then.” Such a passive approach to data management, he says, can represent a missed opportunity. “CIOs should consider introducing technologies that can help manage data more strategically. For example, advanced analytics and data management tools can often improve data quality and mining capabilities. As the keepers of these technologies, CIOs can add considerable value to the planning process.”

Friends in High Places

As CIOs improve business alignment, they may become victims of their own success.

“Company leaders can be counted on to ask for more support than IT can realistically deliver. This is where having a direct line to the CFO becomes invaluable,” says Lowrie. “There are situations in which you will have to make trade-offs, choosing where—and where not—to invest. If the CFO is actively involved in the process, company leaders are more likely to accept decisions and support them, even though they may not be happy about it.”